CANNES, France (AP) — British pop star Charli XCX is not worried about following up the success of her critically acclaimed album “Brat.” In a recent interview with Culted at the Cannes International Film Festival, she discussed the pressure of matching her previous work.
“I don’t really feel the pressure to create another record like ‘Brat,’ because when I was making it, even though I really believed in it and totally knew what I wanted to do with it, I had no idea how it would be received,” Charli said. “I was really doing it for myself and marketing it in the way I wanted to for myself, but I had no clue that people would kind of connect to it in the way that they did.”
She added, “So yeah, I don’t really feel the pressure, because I feel that you can never really do the same thing twice, and my next record will probably be a flop, which I’m down for to be honest.”
Released in June 2024, “Brat” reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200, marking Charli’s highest peak on the chart. The album, known for its lime-green cover and cultural impact during the 2024 U.S. presidential race, solidified Charli’s status as a pop A-lister after years as a cult-favorite artist.
Currently, Charli is focused on touring and has wrapped four sold-out nights at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. She is also exploring onscreen opportunities, including a movie she conceptualized for A24 titled “The Moment.”
Almost a year after “Brat’s” release, Charli is experiencing a resurgence of her older song “Party 4 U,” which has gained popularity on TikTok five years after its initial release on the 2020 album “How I’m Feeling Now.”
Reflecting on the track, she told Culted, “It takes me back to the time of the pandemic, really, because that’s when I was recording the vocals. It actually started a while before that — the initial idea. But we kind of never — I never really took it anywhere. So, yeah, now when I think of the song, I just think back to five years ago and how different the world was then. We were all inside. No one was hanging out. You know, it was kind of lonely.”